Listening to The Lancet

摘要

Readers may be aware of the weekly audio digests of the journal, posted on the website every Friday-and monthly audio summaries too for The Lancet Infectious Diseases and The Lancet Neurology. 6 months after this venture into audio, we are pleased to announce the launch this week of The Lancet podcast. Audio summary? Podcast? What's the difference? And why are we doing it?The editors of the New Oxford American Dictionary declared "podcasting" the 2005 word of the year, defining the term as "a digital recording of a radio broadcast or similar program, made available on the Internet for downloading to a personal audio player". Newspapers use podcaststo broadcast audio content fromprint interviews to drive traffic to their websites. The San Francisco Chronicle was probably the first major daily newspaper to start podcasting via an external website, in February, 2005. Hong Kong's South China Morning Post was the first to use its own website and the first in Asia, having launched in April, 2005.Radio and television shows are increasingly available as podcasts, the UK comedian Ricky Gervais' show regularly securing a staggering 300 000 downloads a show-and at just under ?a download, a lucrative podcast at that. Student lectures, company meetings, tourist information-audio and podcasting is firmly established in the multimedia world.